Stephen Brashear Getty Of the most popular coffee shops in San Franciscos Financial District only one is manned by a robot Every morning in a glass-and-wood booth on the corner of One Bush Street customers queue around a whirring hydraulic arm waiting for it to serve them cappuccino Its an odd sight Cafe X has three San Francisco locations and all are cashless and fully automated with orders taken via app The one I pass on the way to work each morning is mere steps away from Amazons cashless Go store where human cashiers and baggers have disappeared and juice and milk are dispensed by wanding your phone over a sensor Human attendants hover in the lobby to aid shoppers mostly newcomers confused by the entire cashless scheme And Amazon does have human employees who prep food and stock items Replacing checkout lanes with sensors and cash registers with swiveling iPads frictionless shopping is the term of art here makes for a novel shopping experience one that Amazon hopes will help it gather shopper data to increase profits Shoppers pay via the bank account attached to their Amazon profile and each purchase is recorded and analyzed for insights into their behaviors and preferences A sophisticated camera system using the same technology that steers self-driving cars monitors shoppers movements within the store Even what they dont do is recorded For example customers who pick up a carton of milk and then set it aside for a less expensive brand could have coupons sent to them Arguments against uploading the grocery store to the cloud include potential job losses for cashiers and baggers but also cybersecurity and IT failures particularly during disasters Imagine dozens of shoppers running for sensors in the panicked hours ahead of tornadoes or winter storms Amazon has said its Go stores can handle an influx of shoppers up to fire code A December report from the United Kingdom also raised the issue of surveillance and abuse Couples with shared bank accounts can easily track each others purchases in a cashless economy which could make it easier for abusers to harass their spouse Still cashless is catching on A second Amazon Go location in the Financial District a few blocks west opened this week Walmart and Tesco are exploring similar cashless stores The popular fast-casual restaurant Sweetgreen the mens retailer Bonobos and the Drybar hair salon have all sworn off paper bills advising employees to simply turn people away if they cant pay digitally Visa just awarded 50 small businesses almost all of them fast-casual food spots 10 000 each for winning its cashless challenge Were going cashless to keep up with the Millennial trend one chirpy winner says in Visas promotional YouTube clip The winners value a post-cash setup because it makes for faster transactions and fewer trips to the bank they say No one likes cash one owner concludes And we dont like cash Killing cash makes billions for credit-card companies Card swipe fees a roughly 1 percent charge that retailers pay to banks when shoppers pay using credit and debit cards earned Visa and Mastercard about 43 billion last year according to The Wall Street Journal Shifting businesses toward frictionless card-only pay models is an enormous moneymaker especially in high-volume food spots where people want to get in and get out as rapidly as possible Its a quick and convenient design and customers may not know that billions of dollars in invisible micro-charges are motivating the shift to tap to pay stores popping up in their neighborhood But while the distinction between cash and money may be irrelevant to a new crop of Millennial-focused restaurant owners some lawmakers are arguing that cashless design is classist In November the New York City councilman Ritchie Torres introduced a bill to ban all types of cashless retailers Go stores and restaurants Similar bills have been introduced in Philadelphia and DC Chicagos attempt at a ban failed In some ways making a card a requirement for consumption is analogous to making identification a requirement for voting Torres told Grubstreet last month The effect is the same It disempowers communities of color Seventeen percent of all black households and 14 percent of all Hispanic households had no bank account in 2017 according to a report from the FDIC Some have poor credit some work jobs where theyre paid only in cash Cashlessness isnt an option for them Similar to how Go shoppers cant get beyond the lobby without an app and an Amazon account cashless stores Torres says create public spaces that all but bar low-income people from entry The unbanked have two choices Join a digital economy via the traditional banking institutions or disappear from these new spaces It will be interesting to see the how a cashless society helps or hinders people with even fewer resources Consider the UKs Greater Change pilot in August supported by Oxford Universitys Said Business School The purpose of the pilot was to allow for cashless donations to the homeless The charity offered lanyards to homeless people each with an attached barcode Simply scanning your phone over the persons QR code sent a small amount of money to them Programs like these may result in a bump in donors but there could also be stigma associated with redeeming the lanyards If history is any indication the effects of these technological changes on societys most vulnerable people wont be considered until theyve become a reality We want to hear what you think about this article Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters theatlanticcom